Saint-Germain Bakery shutting down

Saint-Germain Bakery, open since 1977, will be shutting down its four neighborhood locations by the end of August, also ending the selling of popular Dee Lite Bakery chiffon cakes, which have been local favorites since the 1960s.

Saint-Germain has four retail bakery locations — Beretania, Dillingham, Kahala and Waipahu stores — the latter two within Times Supermarket. According to a June 7 announcement on its website stghi.com, the closure was attributed to “the persistence of a tough economy.”

Director of Sales Norikazu Miyata said the company, which has 111 employees, has had a steady drop in sales since 2017. The decision was made by the corporate owners of Saint-Germain Japan.

“We appreciate everyone who enjoyed our bread, pastry and cakes. Without our customers we wouldn’t have lasted for 41 years,” Miyata said. The best-sellers of the artisanal bread company, whose trademark was a Japanese-French style of pastry, were the anpan (filled with sweet bean paste), the melon pan and Japanese-style sandwich breads, he said.

Saint-Germain originally started as a Tokyu Foods in-store bakery in Japan in 1970. It opened its first bakery inside Shirokiya at Ala Moana Center, selling French- and Japanese-style breads, but that location closed early this year.

The company acquired Dee Lite Bakery in 1990 and incorporated its famous guava and rainbow chiffon cakes into its product line.

According to an Aug. 16, 2008, Honolulu Star-Bulletin article, Saint-Germain took over Dee Lite Bakery from Herbert and Sue Ma­tsuba, owners since 1959. Dee Lite predominantly sold French bread and sweetbread, and slowly added its cakes, starting with coconut and dobash, then guava chiffon cake. Word of mouth generated cake sales to the point where in 1964 the Matsubas were able to expand to a new location on Dillingham Boulevard, which is still Saint-Germain’s central bakery. The most popular rainbow cake — a mix of guava, passion fruit and lime layers — came along around 1985.